The mother of a five-year-old autistic boy who died after falling from the 15th floor of his family's east London flat told an inquest that her son would still be alive if the council had fulfilled its duties. Aalim Ahmed died on May 16, 2024, after falling from a kitchen window onto a railing below the Jacobs House residential block in Plaistow.
Sahra Osman, Aalim's mother, stated at an inquest held at Walthamstow Coroner's Court that the family felt the flat, allocated by Newham Council in February 2023, was unsuitable from the outset. She was pregnant at the time and claims the council advised her to accept the flat and file a complaint rather than risk homelessness.
Osman suggested that her son might have been attempting to reach a biscuit from a cupboard near the window when he fell. She emphasized that Aalim, who had been diagnosed with autism, had "no sense of danger." The inquest heard that the windows in the flat had "faulty restrictors," and her attempts to have them repaired were unsuccessful, with workmen repeatedly failing to resolve the issue.
"I did everything I could as a mum to help my son," Osman told the council's representative at the inquest. "You guys could have prevented this tragic thing from happening. If you had done your job, he could have been here."
She further stated, "I think that Newham Council failed me as a mum, as a tenant. I tried everything. I tried to tell them my concerns about safety multiple times and you guys ignored me rather than doing anything about the actual issues."
Osman informed the court that she had sent an email detailing Aalim's autism diagnosis and believed she had also sent a letter to the council about it. Despite engineers visiting the flat for repairs, she felt the residence remained unsafe due to open windows. She recounted that on the night of the incident, her toddler's screams alerted her and her partner that something was wrong.
Aalim's father, Makail Ahmed, discovered his son's body on the ground floor shortly after. Neighbours called emergency services.
Earlier in the hearing, Osman described how, in January 2024, a window engineer's visit did not resolve the issue, as she could still open all the windows. She had requested safety restrictors for all windows, noting that the bedroom window could be left "just open wide," which she found "quite scary and it was unsafe." She said that after the engineer attempted a fix, a restrictor was found on the floor within a day.
Osman's attempts to complain to the council about the faulty windows, describing one as "wide open, it would not lock, it was hanging," were not treated as an emergency, she told the inquest. She expressed frustration that it could take months for the council to properly address such issues, adding that "the restrictors were not working, they were there for decoration."
The council suggested that the engineer was not informed of restrictor issues in the kitchen but rather in the living room. Osman, however, maintained she had reported problems in all rooms and accused the council of not taking her situation seriously.
"If you people did your job seriously and done what you should have my son could have been here. It was preventable," she stated. "If the council had done their job my son could have been here."
She denied any suggestion that she may have forced a window open due to hot weather.
Assistant coroner Ian Wade acknowledged the "horrendous loss borne by Aalim's family and indeed the community," adding that he was conscious that the incident "should never have happened."